United Arab Emirates

Democratic Governance

Parliamentary development

Strengthening the Capacity of the UAE’s Federal National Council; In December 2006, the first-ever partial elections of the Federal National Council (FNC) were held in the United Arab Emirates. Since 2005, UNDP has provided technical assistance to the FNC in the area of capacity building for members and staff in order to support the parliamentary development in the country.

Training's on substantive and procedural issues as well as skills such as public speaking, dealing with the media, debating and codes of conduct have been provided to the FNC’s members. UNDP’s assistance to the FNC has been also focusing on activities to strengthen parliamentary library and research services.
The presence of nine women members of the FNC constitutes a valuable entry point for the inclusion of gender sensitive aspects within the ongoing technical cooperation programme between FNC and UNDP UAE.

Public Administration Reform

Strategic Budgeting in the Federal Government of UAE; The Ministry of Finance and Industry (MOFI) of UAE has launched an ambitious reform programme aimed at modernizing public resources management and increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of federal government spending. The initiatives include strengthening the strategic budgeting process and introducing performance based budgeting across the federal government, modernizing the accounting and information systems used in government financial management and improving efficiency in cash management.

UNDP UAE technical assistance in all the above areas has been ongoing since 2003. It is delivered in the form of high-level advisory services and intensive capacity building programme targeting 40 federal ministries and autonomous agencies (up to 800 federal government staff). As a result, a uniform medium-term framework to cost budgets across the Federal Government and activities have been reorganized within programs and subprograms to facilitate priority setting, costing and monitoring. Another key component of the program is the development of a new Financial Management Information System (FMIS) that has been fully operational since January 2007.

Support to the Government of Dubai; The economy of Dubai is experiencing unprecedented growth and structural changes as the Emirate strives to be an active player in the global trading system. In this context, the management of the economy and sound decision-making require continuous and thorough analyses of the economic and the business environment. This has led to the creation of the Economic Policy Unit (EPU) of the Executive Office of Dubai to whom UNDP UAE has provided technical assistance (since 2005) for the development of an economic data set and modeling tools as well for staff training in economic analysis and forecasting. Moreover, UNDP UAE also contributed to the drafting of the Dubai Economic Development Plan (EDP) 2005-2015.

More recently, a scoping mission has been conducted for the establishment of the Dubai Statistics Centre.

Current Active Projects under Democratic Governance

Project Related Links

• UNDP and Governance

United Arab Emirates Government Links

• UAE Federal National Council
• UAE Federal e-Government Portal
• Ministry of Finance and Industry
• Economic & Policy Research Unit